Face Recipes

From cleansing balms to serums and everything inbetween.

Soothing Hyaluronic Acid Facial Serum

Today's recipe is kicking off a new soothing skin care series that is perfectly timed for the driest, darkest, and often coldest part of the winter here in Calgary. The formulas in this series star a beautiful selection of wonderful, effective ingredients that have...

Indigo Lagoon Balm

This rich blue balm is a DIY version of a very popular and very expensive shop-bought balm. This particular balm is known for its striking dark blue hue that comes from a hefty dose of expensive blue tansy essential oil. I've created a more budget friendly version you...

Winter Solstice Facial Polish

After the annual colourful craziness of Christmas DIYs I've really been enjoying dreaming up something solstice-inspired these last few years. We've got a face cream, a soap, and a mask, and now we've got a star-studded charcoal-infused facial polish. This facial...

Sugar Plum Facial Lotion

I start planning out Christmas recipes in the summer and typically have everything more-or-less nailed down by the end of September. This formula wasn't in the original plan, but I am so in love with plum oil right now that I couldn't not make some sort of decadent...

Sugar Plum Lip Balm

I've been gifting homemade lip balm to friends and family for so long now that people have told me they just hold out for Christmas rather than buy more—and I'm definitely not going to let them down! This year's holiday lip balm is Sugar Plum themed (it seemed much...

Clementine Facial Cleansing Milk

Today we're making a gentle, low-foam, creamy Clementine Facial Cleansing Milk. It comes together just like a lotion, with the addition of a few grams of surfactants in the cool-down phase for a titch of cleansing power. If you've been looking at making your own...

Sea Buckthorn and Charcoal Cleansing Balm

This striking Sea Buckthorn and Charcoal Cleansing Balm stars two potent ingredients to create a perfect-for-Halloween cleansing balm. The inspiration for this came from wanting to create something for Halloween—in past years I've done lots of pumpkin spice things...

Hydrating Aloe Facial Mist

Today's facial mist recipe was inspired by a recipe request and a cult favourite herb-spiked super-hydrating face spritz. Anuradha requested "a facial spritzer... something calming [and] refreshing," and the product she linked to featured aloe vera and a selection of...

Sea Buckthorn Glow Serum

This simple formula stars a few beautiful plant-sourced oils to create a vitamin rich, antioxidant packed, anti-inflammatory skin serum. With its velvety skin feel, soft nutty scent, and rich slip it's become a quick favourite in my nightly skincare routine. Like all...

Rose Witch Hazel Facial Toner

This sweetly fragrant, refreshing facial toner has become a fast favourite of mine. It smells deliciously of roses, features several soothing and lightly hydrating ingredients, and leaves my skin feeling revived and gently cleansed. It's also crazy easy to make (no...

Oil Cleansing Gel

When I was in Montreal last year I visited Coop Coco, a local DIY supplier, and poked around, looking for things I didn’t have that would fit in my suitcase. I ended up picking up a bottle of Sucragel, a cold-process emulsifier I’d never worked with before, brought it...

Herbs & Honey Pink Clay Mask

Today's project is inspired by a face mask I spotted on Instagram that rings it at about $100/100mL. It definitely had some good ingredients in it, but nothing that should make it that sort of wince-worthy expensive. My version blends two different clays with some...

Creamy Lip Balm

This rich, creamy lip balm came out of the experiments I did as I was developing my recipe for my Basic Moldable Lipstick Base. It was the far end of my "let's make this creamier" experiments, and while I loved how it felt, it basically glued itself to the inside of...

Moisturizing Overnight Lip Mask

Back in December I picked up Laniege’s Lip Sleeping Mask at San Francisco’s Duty Free shop during a rather long stop-over on my way to New Zealand. I’d read about the product working wonders for super dry lips and was intrigued by those claims and also by the idea of...

Frankincense Facial Lotion

This delightful lotion comes from a recipe request from Ashlie, who loves the Frankincense Intense line from Neal’s Yard Remedies. I love Neal’s Yard; their formulations are solid and their corporate ethos is both environmentally and socially responsible. I’ve visited...

Rose Silk Hydrating Sheet Mask

Sheet masks are all the rage these days, but they are also usually at least $1–2 a piece, and you only get to use them once, and that’s a bit ridiculous. I have a few (mostly from last October's trip to NYC) and I find myself hoarding them (like I used to do with bath...

Eucalyptus Mint Soft Cleansing Balm

This soft, squeezable cleansing balm is rich and creamy, melts into a stunning cleanser once you start working with it, and leaves your skin feeling refreshed and just a touch minty. I love it first thing in the morning to help me hit the ground running! Want to watch...

Canada Day Clay Face Mask

Happy Canada Day! For anyone who doesn't already know, I'm Canadian, and Canada Day was yesterday—a day where we celebrate red and white, maple leaves, apologizing to people who bump into you, and our delicious decision to elevate doughnut holes into their own food...

Lemon Rose Tinted Lip Balm

After returning from a week in Toronto earlier this month my lips were a mess. Toronto is wonderfully humid whilst Calgary is... not... and my lips had been spoilt with all that decadent, skin-loving humidity. The return to Calgary saw my lips pitching a very...

Lemon Rose Facial Lotion

This lightweight, hydration-packed facial lotion is one of my formulas from my Formula Botanica coursework, and it also happens to be the first recipe I'm sharing using hyaluronic acid! I tested this lotion through some of Calgary's driest winter months and found it...

Lemon Rose Facial Cleansing Drops

I seem to be on a bit of a "concentrated" kick, partially inspired by my recent trip to Australia. I brought shampoo bars with me (that also ended up doubling as body wash), and found that all the use (aka getting wet) and the lack of time to dry between moves meant...

Lavender Gel Facial Cleanser

This fun, softly purple Lavender Gel Facial Cleanser is another thing I've devised as part of my Formula Botanica coursework. It's a wobbly, silky semi-solid facial cleansing experience that I probably find entirely too amusing 😝It's simple to make (no heat...

Rose Micellar Water

I'm pretty excited to be able to share a micellar water recipe I'm happy with. I've been experimenting with micellar water formulas quite a lot over the last year and while the concept is simple enough in theory, it took quite a lot of fiddling and refining to create...

Earl Grey Face Mask

I thought we'd continue our Earl Grey theme today with this simple clay face mask that helps brighten the complexion and fade hyper-pigmentation left behind by healing acne. It's made from just a few simple ingredients that you almost certainly already have, comes...

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